She laughs weakly. “Of course not. I like that story best of all.”
“I have another, if you’d like to hear it.”
She nods.
“It’s about a man, this one.”
“Is he French?”
“He is. And he was a terrible coward who hid inside, because the bullies in his head told him to. His only real friends were clocks and pigeons.”
“I know this one. The man was very, very handsome. And an excellent cook.”
“He hid in his lonely little tower for years and years, until a leggy blonde American woman—”
Caroly snorts.
“—came to rescue him.”
“Oh yes. By forcing him down the tower steps every morning and down the street to ye olde coffee shop.”
“And they moved to the countryside and lived happily every after.”
She turns to plant a kiss on my shoulder. “That was a very good story. But I think maybe we ought to get busy writing a new chapter tonight.”
I take her cue when she lies down, straddling her hips and dropping to my forearms, kissing her lightly. I’ve been hard on and off for an hour, but now, looming above her, my cock grows stiff as stone. Her smooth, soft palms run along my sides and back and thighs, just as they have a hundred times before, but never quite like this. New space, new light, new texture under my knees and new smells mingling with her familiar vanilla-amber perfume—wood smoke and autumn crispness.
When I shift my legs, she does the same, hugging my thighs with hers, calves tugging at my backside. I know this request well, and for once I grant it without making her wait, lowering my hips and letting my erection brush her mound. She rewards me with a tiny gasp, clasping my shoulders.
Cocking my hips, I angle my shaft between her thighs and give a slow, long stroke against her clothed sex. Her moan makes me lightheaded. I drop to kiss and nip at her throat.
“This answers my question,” she mumbles. “About whether you’d be relaxed enough on this trip to…you know.”
I push up on my arms. “It’s easy, with the way you look at me. We could be in some hotel in the heart of the city, with the din of the Champs-Élyssées coming through the window, and as long as you have that look in your eyes, I’m ready.” We both know it’s a lie, of course. A pretty lie, one we’d both like to believe, but it’s different here, undeniably. Quiet, calm, dark, easy. The peace I’ve worked so hard to create in my little cell in the honeycomb called Paris. An entire countryside’s worth.
“Lie on your side,” Caroly whispers.
I do, tucking my lower arm beneath her head and its pillow, pulling her close with the other. She strokes my chest and kisses my neck, and I feel myself turning helpless, desperate, rabid—a thousand conflicting things at once. No one’s ever made me feel so wanted, so longed for, so treasured as she does. She waited for me, she’s said. Avoided men for ages, then sought me out as a rejection-proof point of entry into the world of sex. Now she loves me, somehow. Wants me just as deeply as she did before those carnal initiations. Wants me as so much more.
It’s as comforting as it is terrifying, because in such a short time I’ve come to care for her in a way I hadn’t known possible. With it comes a fear I’ve blocked since the passing of my mother. I love Caroly so much, if I lost her, a part of me would turn brittle and crumble to dust, leaving a hollowness I’d carry with me for the rest of my life.
I’ve tensed, and she notices. She stops caressing to embrace me, surely thinking some tentacle of my agoraphobia has snaked between us, to turn me so rigid and unsure.
“I’m fine,” I promise, and smooth her curls. “Just feeling so much. All good things.” Good things chased with a fear of loss, but such is life. And I have a life again, a proper one. The fear is a thing to rejoice in. Proof that I can still love this deeply.
“Maybe we should get you out of your head.” She strokes my hair, gazing into my eyes. I want to swim in those blue irises, dive deep and emerge under a pitch-black sky, riddled with stars.
I steal a kiss. “Maybe we should.”
Another kiss, and she welcomes my tongue, making my cock throb with impatience. Her hand runs down my neck and chest, over my stomach and between my legs to clasp my erection. I gasp, the sound swallowed in the kiss. I fumble to return the touch, but she grasps my wrist, halting me.
“You’ve already made me come, remember? Let me spoil you for a little while.”
Kind words, but I hear mischief in her tone.
Let me torture you for a little while, I translate. The anxious virgin I met in March must have been a figment. The woman here on this bed with me now is too fearless, too eager to possibly be the same Caroly. My progress has been slower and more halting, but I limp steadily onward toward a functional life, her hand always there, guiding me.
The tender thoughts dissolve as she urges me to lie back, edging her way down my body.
I put a hand to her arm. “No. I’m too close already.”
“Just for a minute.” She’s on her knees between my legs, palms slipping over my chest, stomach, caressing my hips, my calves, up the insides of my thighs. I moan, helpless, and gather her hair in my hands.
The barest glance of her fingers jolts my cock. A stroke and I’m shaking.
“Just imagine how good it’ll feel,” she murmurs, then my crown slips between her warm, soft lips.
“Oh.”
Needing a distraction—a chance at lasting longer than a minute—I conjure the first time she did this to me. She’d wanted to try sooner than I’d thought wise, considering her inexperience. It ended in tears. Now the fingers wrapped around the base of my shaft are strong and confident. She swallows half my length in a breath, pure slick heat. No hesitation.
“Yes.”
I made you this woman, I think, and my pleasure folds in on itself, too strong and potent to ignore. I hold her curls loosely, following the bobbing motion of her head.
“Softly,” I beg.
It feels so good, so absurdly good, I have to laugh. “Where on earth did you learn this, beautiful girl?”
She frees her mouth just long enough to smile at me and say, “From a very patient man.”
Another minute I let her spoil me, then I know it’s too far.
“Enough,” I whisper. “Please.”
I’m released, as relieved as I am disappointed. I can’t stand to wait another second, but she escapes to tend to the fire, laying a fresh log on the pile. The flames rise and, as she returns to the bed, the fire glowing in my body spikes as well.
“Take off your underwear.”
She smiles, kneeling, and reaches behind to unhook her bra. It joins my clothes on the floor and before she can get her panties off, I’m fairly tackling her for the chance to strip them. They’re gone. She’s beneath me, hands on my arms, gaze on my face.
“I think it’s time,” she whispers.
I nod. She shifts her legs outside mine, tilts her hips. It’s so much like the moment she invited me to take her virginity. So like it, yet utterly new. She releases my arm to draw the side of her finger up and down my cock, and my sentimentality dissolves in a tide of lust. I lower my hips so my shaft is along her wet lips, and I start to move. She grasps my shoulders with a moan.
My attention is nailed between us, unbudging. This is so wrong, my conscience mutters as my flushed flesh strokes hers. With no latex veiling my cock, a flash of instinctual panic stiffens my spine. I’ve done just about everything a person can in bed, but this feels truly forbidden. Pornographic. It fills me with awe and shame and a hundred other exciting emotions.
Without warning, Caroly reaches between us, clasping me, drawing my head up and down along her lips. I curse, so shocked my arms nearly buckle.
“Let me feel you. Please.”
I nudge her hand aside and steady my cock. I take a deep breath, then another.
And I push inside.
She’s hot, soft, taut, wet. Everything I’ve been fantasizing about,
multiplied. For the longest time I hold us there, my cock buried as deep as it goes, impossible to distinguish my pulses from hers. Slow as the moonrise, I draw myself out, memorizing every sensation. Back again, just as deep. I shift to my elbows and drop my forehead to hers, overcome.
“You feel so good. So, so good.”
“So do you.”
But she can’t have any idea how sweet this is. How slick and warm she feels around me, how utterly different this familiar moment has become, with nothing between us. Nothing.
My throat’s so tight I can barely get the thought out. “I’ve never felt this close to anyone. Ever.”
She cradles my head, kisses my mouth. “No?”
“Never.” I edge my forearms closer to her ribs, coaxing her thighs a touch wider with mine. “Does it really feel different to you?”
“Yes.” She pauses a moment. I know that look. She’s struggling for words that won’t make her blush too deeply. “The friction’s different. More…explicit.”
“Really?” I still my hips, smiling. She nods, and I ease my length back, nice and slow.
“Really.” She kneads my backside, tugging. I ignore the request, maintaining my glacial pace. This moment will only come once. Let us both luxuriate in every inch of my slippery flesh driving into hers. A rare occasion indeed, for both of us to be experiencing something together in equal wonder. I’ve felt this before, but it was so long ago and so taken for granted, I know it only as an intellectual fact. A more powerful fact is the one I uttered only seconds ago—I’ve never, ever felt so close to anyone. I want to slip inside her body, far beyond the mechanics of penetration. I want to feel what she does, see what she does. It seems I nearly can.
I slide my arms under her back and press our cheeks together, she breathing in my ear, I in hers, and I begin to thrust. Her thighs hug my waist tighter, her hips mirroring mine, deepening each thrust, lengthening every withdrawal.
Barely realizing it, I’ve begun moaning. Deep, needy sounds, set to the rhythm of our sex. I hear my name between her labored exhalations. Those same breaths warmed my neck the very first night we did this, steeped in this same awe. I can never give her what she’s given me—exclusive custody of her sexual experiences—but I can give her this moment, this virtual first.
I speed my thrusts and let every shock of pleasure I feel escape from my mouth in grunts and sighs and groans. Take what you want, her hands tell me, urging my hips. And for a glorious minute, I do just that. Let the fire rage until I feel so good, so close, it frightens me that I haven’t come yet. That I can burn this hot and not lose myself. Not go insane from the sheer intensity of this pleasure.
Then all at once, the hands on my sides stop begging.
“Wait,” she says.
Panting, I pause, as easily as I might stop the Earth from spinning. “Yes?”
She pulls away, and my throbbing cock is closed in cold, dry air. I gasp and shiver, so primed it hurts. She twists around in my arms so we’re on our sides, and I understand. I slide my leg between hers, angle my cock and slip back inside her heat from behind. Her moan is soft and tight, excitement sharpening. I wrap her in my arms, chest flush to her back, mouth just behind her ear. I shove my own pleasure into the shadows and concentrate on hers. The breast in my palm is hot from the fire.
“You like me this way,” I murmur. “Behind you.”
“Yes.”
So often I wonder why, when her feelings for me sprouted from a purely visual attraction. Because it feels animalistic somehow, she told me once. Because she likes to hear me losing my mind behind her, all my poise gone. We do enjoy demolishing our lovers, I muse, slipping my hand down her belly, settling it on the soft curls of her mound. We want to see our shy partners turn brazen from what we can do to them. We want to bring our domineering ones to their knees, if only for a moment, if only evidenced by a helpless look in their eyes, a shudder, a whispered plea. If Caroly wants her elegant servant torn to bits by a desire he can’t control, I won’t deny her.
I slip my fingertips to her lips, glancing my own sliding flesh, stealing her slickness. Her clit is already hard, a throbbing knot of nerves begging for my touch. I could circle with exquisite precision, stroke with the lightest, most excruciating pressure. But I won’t. Instead, I let myself feel my own arousal. My cock, wrapped in her. I shut my eyes. My fingers twitch against her clit, unbidden. Whatever I feel, I let it spill from my mouth and into her ear. I bump her thighs with every thrust, and she reaches behind to grasp my flexing hip.
“Didier.”
That alone is a sharp shove, ushering me away from reason and toward the crash. I take her harder, holding my fingers still and letting the motion of the sex dictate the strokes they give. I feel wild and reckless. Bossy. I’ve been crowding her body, and now she’s nearly pinned to the bed but for the elbow propping her up. I drive my leg deeper between her thighs and move the other to join it.
“I’ve wanted this so badly,” I whisper.
“Me too.”
“I’m close.” Saying it spurs my need, edging me closer. For ages I’ve had to be told when it’s my turn to release. It’s my job to know when a woman’s taken everything she needs from me. To read the signals and seek permission. Tonight, though. Tonight I’m holding back not out of duty, but out of desperation. I don’t want this to be over. But every stroke blazes with sensation, burning hotter, hotter…
She doesn’t urge me. She knows some switch in my head wants her attention, needs to be flipped to inform me it’s okay to be selfish, but I can sense she’s denying me. I’m not a whore anymore. I’m just a man. Her equal and her lover, mortal and allowed to lose control. And how good it always feels to me, watching her come apart from our sex. She must want the same. To watch me succumb to the pleasure like most any man can.
Come, she usually says, with her voice or her gaze, with urging hands on my hips. Not now.
I feel the shapes of words forming on my tongue—I’m so close. I swallow them. I sink into my body, into the excitement humming in my cock, into the fire. A groan rises from my throat, erupts from my mouth, an Ahh harsh with need.
She whispers, “Take what you need.”
Take. Not an easy order. Not when I’ve spent all these years only giving. Even alone, just myself and my hand, I don’t come until the woman in my mind tells me to.
But tonight. Come, a voice inside me says. Come, just as you’ve fantasized all this time. Stripped. Bare. Selfish and sinful, come like an animal in heat.
The pleasure’s sharpening, deepening. Beyond friction. Beyond taboo. It cuts like a blade; my body is begging for mercy, my cock hot and hard and screaming for relief. A gleaming knife’s edge sliding along some tendon of self-control, until—
I snap.
“Oh.”
It rushes through me, swallows me up, pulls me under in a crush of perfect, deafening pleasure. I moan, out of control. Behind the noise and sensation is Caroly. Her soft voice chanting, “Good, good.” Her arm angled back and her hand on my hip, riding my bucking spasms. The way it shakes, I know she’s there. Orgasm still ringing through me, I make her join me with a flurry of practiced strokes.
“Come.”
I feel when she does—feel it more explicitly than I ever have, like two dimensions becoming three. Her breath, her smell, those most intimate contractions pulsing around the point of my own release, then easing. I’m shaking all over, still moaning even as the wave of my orgasm recedes.
“Didier.” Her voice is like cool palms cupping my face, soothing me.
My groans quiet. The world stops spinning and slowly I float back to the earth, back to the bed with the softest thump. Then…
Bliss.
No rush to withdraw and shed the condom. I can stay in her warmth as long as I like, wallowing in the beautiful, silly, mammalian mess we call sex. I wrap my arm tight around her ribs, push her hair aside with my nose so I can press my lips to the back of her neck.
I hope I never take it
for granted, how close she feels at this instant. How difficult the journey was, getting to where we are now. So often I envy the careless way other people move through the world, but I don’t ever want to forget how hard I’ve worked for this. This moment is my reward. A gift to pale all of the material ones she’s given me. And for once I feel truly worthy of her offering.
Another kiss behind her ear. Another. “You’re much too good to me,” I whisper.
She clears her throat. “I doubt that. You’re the nicest man I know.”
“Am I?”
“And the most romantic, and the most sensitive.”
“Sensitive, yes. I believe that. Sentimental.”
She turns, just enough to make eye contact. “And the bravest.”
I don’t blush easily, but I feel my face warm as though I were peering into the fire. “You’re too kind.”
“No one could ever be too kind to you,” she says, and clasps my wrist at her waist.
We lay wordlessly for a long time, the silence filled by the fire’s crackling and the night noises drifting from the open window. Caroly twitches, roused from the edge of sleep. She yawns deeply and shifts against me, my cock finally slipping free between her thighs.
I peel my body from hers and toss a small log on the dwindling flames, and shut the window on my way out of the room. I find a clean washcloth and we tidy ourselves. Freeing the covers, we wriggle between the sheets.
“I don’t know if I can fall asleep without the sound of pigeons cooing,” she says, adjusting the pillow beneath her head. The moment she’s settled, I curl my body alongside hers once more.
“Crickets will have to suffice. Or you could fall asleep with the snores of an extremely satisfied man at your ear,” I suggest, and hug her tightly, settling my lips against her neck. Her skin tastes clean, only the faintest trace of sweat. I kiss her there for as long as I dare. Any more and sleep’s spell will be broken, and surely she’s too drowsy to wish to be pawed by some restless, lusty creature. I choose to behave, nestling my face against her shoulder.
Exposure Page 4
